FLOWING WATER
I
ON a spring afternoon, Mary at ease, novel in lap, let her mind flow
over the years in their passing. Four had gone by since she had defied
her family, in order to embrace a career, which in their view was full
of peril. But in spite of that, so far she had escaped disaster. And
fortune had been amazingly kind in the meantime.
On the table near Mary’s elbow were five cups on a tray, and opposite,
also at ease, with her hands behind her shrewd head, was Milly Wren.
Mary had just begun to share a very comfortable flat with Milly and
Milly’s mother.
Milly herself, in Mary’s opinion, was more than worthy of her
surroundings. Loyal, sympathetic, full of courage, she had served a far
longer apprenticeship to success than Mary had. She had “made good” in
the face of heavy odds.
Milly had not a great talent. Force of character and singleness of aim
had brought her to the top, and only these, as she well knew, would
keep her there. But with Mary it was a different story. All sorts of
fairies had attended her birth. She had every gift for the career she
had chosen, moreover, she had them in abundance. Milly, who had gone up
the ladder a step at a time, would have been more than human had she
not envied her friend the qualities she wore with the indifference of a
regular royal queen.
The clock on the chimney-piece struck four.
“I’m feeling quite excited,” Milly suddenly remarked.
From the depths of the opposite chair came the note which for six
months now had cast a spell upon London.
“He mustn’t know that,” laughed Mary. “Dignity, my child, touched with
hauteur, is the prescription for a marquis. At least that’s according
to the book of the words.” And she gayly waved the novel she had
neglected for nearly an hour.
“Oh, Sonny,” said Milly Wren, “I wasn’t thinking of _him_. I was
thinking of the friend he is bringing, who is simply dying to know you.”
Mary knew this was quite true, for that was Milly’s way.
“Oh, is he!” If the tone was disdain, its sting was masked by gentle
irony and humor. These airs and graces didn’t make enemies, they so
frankly belonged to the wonderful Mary Lawrence--her name in the
theater. That which might have been mere petulance in a nature thinner
of texture, became with her a half-royal impatience for the more
trivial aspects of the human comedy.
“But I want to see him,” persisted Milly. “Sonny thinks no end of him.”
“Then I’m sure he’s nice.”
“Why do you think so?” Milly was a little intrigued by the warmth of
the words.
“Because Lord Wrexham is charming.”
Milly laughed. The naïve admiration was unexpected, the slightly too
respectful air was puzzling. Milly herself was so _blasé_ in regard to
the peerage that such an attitude of mind seemed almost provincial. Yet
she would have been the first to own that it was the only thing about
her enigmatic friend which suggested anything of the kind.
“Sonny says he raves about you.”
“It’s _his funeral_.” The laugh was honestly gay. “He’ll be very
disappointed, poor lad.”
“Don’t fish.”
“I never fish in shallow waters, Miss Wren.”
“You are the most shameless angler I know. But you do it so beautifully
that people don’t realize what you are at.”
“Unconsciously--say unconsciously,” came a flash from the opposite
chair.
“So I used to think. Before I really knew you I thought everything you
said and did just happened so. But now I am not quite sure that you
have not thought everything out beforehand.”
“Don’t make me out a horror.”
“Anyway you are much the cleverest creature I have ever met. You are
so deep that there is no fathoming you. Somehow you are not the least
ordinary in anything.”
Mary abruptly brought the conversation back to Sonny and his friend.
The latter, it seemed, had first gazed on the famous Miss Lawrence in
New York, at the Pumpernickel Theater, the previous year.
“An American?”
“No,” said Milly. “But he’s seen a lot of life out West.”
Before other questions could rise to Mary’s lips, Mrs. Wren came in.
Milly’s mother was an elderly lady who had been on the stage. In the
first flight of her profession, life had given her many a shrewd
knock, but in the process she had picked up a considerable knowledge
of the world and its ways. She lived for Milly, in whom her every
thought was centered, for in the daughter the mother lived again.
Intensely ambitious for her, Mrs. Wren was a little inclined to resent
the intrusion within the nest of a bird of such dazzling plumage as
Mary Lawrence. At the same time that honest woman well knew that her
daughter had more to gain than she had to lose by sharing a roof with
such a supremely attractive stable companion.
Mrs. Wren found it very difficult to place Mary Lawrence. In ideas and
outlook, in the face she showed to the world, she was far from being a
typical member of her calling as the good lady knew it. As Mrs. Wren
reckoned success, this girl had won it on two continents almost too
abundantly, but she seemed to hold it very cheap. Perhaps it had been
gained too easily. Milly’s mother, rather jealous, rather ambitious as
she was, could hardly find it in her heart to say it was undeserved,
but Mary Lawrence took the high gifts of fortune so much for granted,
almost as if they were a birthright, that the mother of her friend,
remembering the long years of her own thornily-crowned servitude, and
Milly’s hard struggle “to arrive,” could not help a feeling of secret
envy.
“His lordship coming to tea?” said Mrs. Wren, with a demure glance at
the five cups on the tray.
None knew so well as she that his lordship was coming to tea. She had
made elaborate preparations in toilette and confectionery in order to
receive him. But the phrase rose so histrionically to her lips that she
simply couldn’t resist it. Somehow it made such a perfect entrance, for
Milly’s mother carried a sense of the theater into private life.
It would have been heartless of Milly, who belonged to another
generation, to have uttered the words on her tongue. And those words
were, “You know perfectly well that Sonny is coming.”
“He said he was,” Milly’s reply was given with a patient smile that
concealed an infinity of boredom. Her mother, fussy, trite, rather
exasperating, had never quite learned amid all her jousts with the
world, to acquire the golden mean. There were times when she sorely
tried her clever and ambitious daughter, whose patience was little
short of angelic.
“What’s the name of the friend he is bringing?”
“Mr. Dinneford.”
“Not another lord?” The tone of Mrs. Wren had a tiny note of
disappointment.
“A rich commoner,” said Milly with a laugh. “At least Sonny says he
will be one of the richest men in England when his uncle dies. His
uncle, I believe, is a great swell.”
“I don’t doubt it, dear,” said Mrs. Wren.
II
An electric bell was heard to buzz.
“They are here,” said Mrs. Wren in a tone with a thrill in it.
A neat parlor maid announced “Lord Wrexham, Mr. Dinneford,” and two
stalwart young men entered cheerily. They were hearty upstanding
fellows, curiously alike in manner, appearance, dress, yet in the
thousand and one subtleties of character immutably different. But
this was not a moment for the fine shades. They came into the room
unaffectedly, without shyness, and warmly took the hands of welcome
that were offered them.
Wrexham, a subaltern of the Pinks of three years’ standing, was an
attractive but rather irresolute young man. He knew that he was
perilously near forbidden ground. If not exactly in the toils of an
infatuation, the charms of Milly were growing day by day upon an
impressionable mind. Fully content as yet to live in the moment,
a wiser young man might have begun to pay the future some little
attention.
As for the lively, headstrong, unconventional Jack Dinneford, at
present at a loose end in London, to whom Wrexham himself had been
appointed as a sort of unofficial bear-leader by the express desire
of Bridport House, that warrior was on a voyage of discovery. In
common with half the males of his age in the metropolis he was already
in the thrall of the wonderful Princess Bedalia. In the opinion of
connoisseurs she was the only one of her kind; for the past two hundred
nights she had played “to capacity” at the Frivolity Theater, and even
Jack Dinneford, who in one way or another had seen a goodish bit of the
Old World and the New, could not repress an exquisite little thrill as
her highness rose with rare politeness to receive him.
“She’s even more stunning than I guessed,” was the thought in Jack’s
mind at the moment of presentation. He could almost feel the magnetism
in her finger tips. She was so alive in every nerve that it would have
called for no great power of imagination to detect vibration all round
her.
“I feel greatly honored in meeting you,” said the young man with
transparent honesty. He was no subscriber evidently to the maxim,
“Language was given us to conceal our thoughts.” Somehow she couldn’t
help liking him for it.
“The honor is mine.” The response was so ready, the humor behind it so
genuine, that they both laughed whole-heartedly and became friends on
the spot. There was no nonsense about Princess Bedalia, and the same
applied to the brown-faced clear-eyed owner of the fanciful scarf pin.
The neat parlor maid brought tea. Wrexham, after a little amiable
chaffing of Mrs. Wren, whom he had met on at least six occasions,
provided Milly with tea and a macaroon, took the like for himself, and
sat beside her without a care in the wide world. She was forbidden
fruit; thus to frail humanity in its present phase she conveyed an idea
of Paradise. Such a view was quite absurd, allowing even for the fact
that Milly was an engaging creature, with a good heart, a ready tongue,
a rather special kind of prettiness, and a particularly shrewd head.
Jack Dinneford on the opposite sofa had stronger warrant for his
emotions. This girl whom he had first seen in New York before the news
of a great inheritance had come to him, whom he had since viewed ten
times from the stalls of the Frivolity Theater, was a personality.
There was no doubt about that. And as he discovered at once their minds
marched together. They saw men and events at the same angle. A phrase
of either would draw forth an instant counterpart; in five minutes they
had turned the whole universe into mockery, but without letting go of
the fact that they were complete strangers colloguing for the first
time.
Mrs. Wren withdrew presently on the pretext that she had letters to
write. A very pleasant hour quickly sped. Each of these four people
was in the mood to enjoy. Life in spite of its hazards, was no bad
thing at the moment. Wrexham, a thorough gentleman, was an immensely
likeable young man. And while he basked in present happiness a certain
resolution began to take shape in his mind.
As for Jack Dinneford at the other side of the room, his thoughts
followed a humbler course. But he was an elemental, a very dangerous
fellow if once he began to play with ideas. At present he suffered from
the drawback of being no more than the nephew of his uncle; therefore
his sensations were not exactly those of Wrexham, who was a natural
caster of the handkerchief. But in this fatal hour Jack was heavily
smitten.
He had met few girls in his twenty-four years of existence. In his
naïf way he confessed as much to Miss Lawrence. She was amused by
the confession and led him to make others. This was easy because he
liked talking about himself, that is to say, with such a girl as Mary
Lawrence inciting him humorously to reveal the piquant details of a
life not without its adventures, he would have had to be much less
primitive than he was to have resisted the lure of the charmer.
She was unaffectedly interested. She differed from Mr. Dinneford
inasmuch as she had met many young men. Therefore, her heart was not
worn on her sleeve for daws to peck at. But he was a new type, and she
confessed gayly to Milly as soon as he had gone, she found him very
amusing.
III
So much happened in the crowded month that followed, that at London
Bridge the Thames might be said to be in spate. The two young men were
often at the theater, and now and again Mary and Milly, chaperoned by
Mrs. Wren, would accept an invitation to supper at a restaurant. Then
there were the happy hours these four people were able to snatch from
their various duties, which they spent under the trees in the Park.
These were golden days indeed, but--the shadow of the policeman could
already be seen creeping up. The senior subaltern had been constrained
one fine morning to take Wrexham so far into his confidence as to
inform him with brutal precision, that if a man in the Household
Cavalry marries an actress, he leaves the regiment.
The young man was intensely annoyed. Wisdom was not his long suit, and
although an excellent fellow according to his lights, right at the
back was the arrogance of old marquisate. His answer to the senior
subaltern was to arrange a most agreeable up-river excursion for the
following Sunday. On returning late in the evening to the flat, Milly
was in rather a flutter.
Mary, who had been one of the merry party, was troubled. She had
certain instincts which went very deep, and these warned her of
breakers ahead. She had a great regard for Milly, and the more she knew
of Wrexham the better she liked him. But she saw quite clearly that
difficulties must arise if the thing went on, and that very powerful
opposition would have to be faced in several quarters.
Moreover, she had now her own problem to meet; Jack had begun to force
the pace. And Mary, who had a sort of sixth sense in these matters, had
already felt this to be an inconvenience. From the first she had found
him delightful. Day by day this feeling had grown. An original, with
a strong will and a keen sense of humor, he differed from his friend
Wrexham inasmuch that he knew his own mind. He returned from the river
fully determined to marry Mary Lawrence.
Perhaps this heroic resolve may have been forced upon him by the
knowledge of other Richmonds in the field. Mary was famous and admired.
It savored of presumption for such a one as himself, in receipt of a
modest two thousand a year from his kinsman, the Duke, to butt in where
men far richer were content to walk delicately. But he was “next in” at
Bridport House, he was heir to a great name, therefore, at the lowest
estimate, he was a quite considerable _parti_. This fact must stand his
excuse, although he was far too astute to make it one in the difficult
game he was about to play.
Jack was not afflicted with subtlety in any form, he was not even a
close observer, but he understood well enough that it was going to
be a man’s work to persuade Mary Lawrence to marry him. She had an
immense independence, to which, of course, she was fully entitled, a
wide field of choice, and under the delightfully amusing give-and-take
which endeared her to Bohemia was a fastidious reserve which somehow
hinted at other standards. Even allowing for a lover’s partiality this
girl was to cut to a pattern far more imposing than Milly Wren. Her
qualities were positive, whereas Milly had prettiness merely, a warm
heart, a factitious charm. However, as soon as this sportsman had made
up his mind to tackle the stiffest fence that a Nimrod has to face, he
decided at once that the hour had come to harden his heart and go at
the post and rails in style.
The next evening, as he strolled with Mary under the trees, he may have
been thinking in metaphor, when he let his eyes dwell on the riders in
the Row.
“How jolly they look!” he said. And then at the instance of a concrete
thought--“By Jove, an idea! Tomorrow morning, if I job a couple of
gees, will you come for a ride?”
The response was a ready one. “I should love to, if you are not afraid
to be seen with an absolute duffer.”
“That’s a bargain. But they may be screws, as there doesn’t seem enough
decent ones to go round at this time of the year.”
“I know nothing about horses,” was the laughing reply, “except just
enough not to look a hired horse in the knees. And the worse my mount
the better for me, at least it reduces my chance of biting the tan.”
“I expect you are a good deal better than you admit.”
She was woman enough to ask why he should think so.
“You have the look of a goer,” he said, as his eye sought involuntarily
the long slender line of a frame all suppleness, delicacy, and power.
“Wait till tomorrow. In the meantime I warn you that you’re almost
certain to be disgraced in the sight of the town.”
“Let’s risk it anyway,” said the young man delightedly.
In a very few minutes, however, Mary seriously regretted a rash
promise. They had only gone a few yards farther, Jack still inclined to
exult at the pact into which he had lured her, when both were brought
up short by a sudden clear “Hello!” from the other side of the rails.
Jack had been hailed by a couple of long, lean young women with
mouse-colored hair, on a couple of long, lean mouse-colored horses.
They were followed at a respectful distance by a very smart groom on a
good-looking chestnut. The set of the close-fitting black habits and
the absolute ease of the wearers denoted the expert horse-woman.
“Hello, Madge--hello, Blanche!” The casual greeting was punctuated by a
wave, equally casual, of the young man’s hand.
As the two riders went slowly by they let their eyes rest upon Mary.
The look she received did not amount to a stare, but it had a cool
impertinence which somehow roused her fighting instinct. Unconsciously
she gave it back. On both sides was a frank curiosity discreetly
veiled, but the honors, if honors there were in the matter, were with
the occupants of the saddle. Somehow that seemed so clearly to have
been the place for generations of these lean young women with their
rigidity of line, their large noses, their cool appraising air of which
they were wholly unconscious.
Who are _they_? was their reaction upon Mary Lawrence.
Who is _she_? was her reaction upon these horsewomen.
“A couple of my cousins.” The young man carelessly answered a question
that Mary was too proud to ask.
IV
Mary’s riding had been confined to a few lessons shared with Milly at
the Brompton School of Equitation, and Milly was urged to make a third
on the morrow. Mrs. Wren felt it to be the due of the proprieties that
she should do so, but Milly herself, apart from the fact that she
was shy of appearing in the Row, was quite convinced that it would
not be the act of “a sport” to overlook the ancient maxim, “Two are
company, three a crowd.” Therefore the invitation was declined. And
this discreet action on the part of Milly gave Fate the opportunity for
which it had seemed to be looking for some little time past.
It was about twenty minutes to eleven in the forenoon of a perfect
first of June that Jack Dinneford rode up gayly to the flat in Broad
Place, leading a horse very likely-looking, but warranted quiet.
It was a fair presumption that the guarantee covered the fact of
its disposition, since it had made the perilous journey from the
jobmaster’s, three doors out of Park Lane, and across the No Man’s
Land yclept Hyde Park Corner, that terrible and trappy maze, without a
suspicion of mental stress.
Jack’s best hunting voice ascended to an open window of the second
story. The complete horsewoman, in every detail immaculate, came on to
the little balcony of Number 16, Victoria Mansions.
“What a gorgeous day!”
“A ripper!”
If excitement there was on the side of either, self-mastery concealed
it. Yet an inconvenient pressure of emotion was shared by both just
then. In spite of a liberal share of self-confidence and a will under
strong control Mary could hardly refrain from the hope that she was
not going to make a perfect fool of herself. As soon as she beheld the
upstanding chestnut below with its slender legs and thin tail, she
winged an involuntary prayer to Allah that there were no tricks in its
repertory unbecoming a horse and a gentleman. As for Jack, the presence
of all the horses in the world would not have excited him. It was not
in him to be excited by things of that kind, that is to say, it was
part of his religion not to be excited by them; all the same there was
a genuine, nay, almost terrible thrill in his heart this morning.
In the course of a rather wakeful night he had made up his mind “to
come to the ’osses” in sober verity. To the best of his present
information the gods, in the absence of the unforeseen, would discuss
the matter privately about twelve o’clock.
“Blanche and Marjorie will have something to look at,” was the proud
thought in the mind of the young man as the complete Diana, fit to
greet Aurora and her courses, emerged from the Otis elevator and took
the front of Broad Place with beauty.
“I wish these clothes were a little less smart, and not quite so
new,” was the first thought in the mind of Diana. “I am sure they
are both of them ‘Cats,’” was the thought which followed close upon
its heels. Until that hour it had never been her lot to harbor
such vain companions. This gay spirit to whom the fairies had been
kind had always seemed to breathe a larger, a diviner air. Such
self-consciousness shamed her; but after all _those two_ with their old
habits and their odd perfection were more to blame than she.
Truth to tell, in the last seventeen hours a subtle, rather horrid
change had taken place in her. Up till six o’clock the previous evening
she had always been nobly sure of herself, regally self-secure. Always
when she had measured herself against others of her age and sex she
had had a feeling of having been born to the purple. Somewhere, deep
down, she had seemed to have illimitable reserves to draw upon when the
creatures of her own orbit had forced her to a reluctant comparison. In
all her dealings with her peers, she had felt that she had a great deal
in hand. But Marjorie and Blanche, whoever Marjorie and Blanche might
be, had seemed to alter all that with a glance of their ironical eyes.
Jack fixed her in the saddle of the tall horse and lengthened her
stirrup with quite a professional air, while Milly and her mother
watched the proceedings in a rather thrilled silence from the balcony
of Number Sixteen. Their minds were dominated by a single thought,
which, however, bore one aspect in the mind of Mrs. Wren, another in
the mind of the faithful Milly.
“She is _set_ on marrying him?”--Mrs. Wren.
“He is so nice, I hope he won’t disappoint her?”--Milly the faithful.
The cavalcade started. As if no such people as Marjorie and Blanche
existed in the world, Mary waved the yellow-gloved hand of an excited
schoolgirl to the balcony of Victoria Mansions. Jack accompanied it
with an upward glance and a gravely-lifted hat.
In the maelstrom of promiscuous vehicles which makes Knightsbridge a
thoroughfare inimical to man, Jack took charge of the good-looking
hireling. With solemn care he piloted the upstanding one and his rather
anxious rider into the calm of Albert Gate.
“I hope you are comfortable,” he found time to say; moreover, he found
time to say it so nicely and sincerely, almost as if his only hope
of happiness, here and hereafter, depended upon the answer, that the
answer came promptly in the form of a gay “Yes,” although had she been
quite honest she would have said she had never felt less comfortable
in her life. Her horse was such a mountain of a fellow, that she might
have been perched on the top of a very old-fashioned velocipede. Then
the saddle was very different from the one at the riding school. It had
much less room and fewer _points d’appui_ to offer. As soon as her knee
tried to grip the pommel she knew that she must not hope to get friends
with it. She had embarked on a very rash adventure. And if she didn’t
make a sorry exhibition of herself in the eyes of All London, including
_those two_, she would have cause to thank her private stars, who, to
give them their due, had certainly looked after her very well so far.
“It’s very sporting of her,” said Expert Knowledge to Jack Dinneford.
“I hope the gee won’t play the fool,” said Jack Dinneford to Expert
Knowledge.
V
Hardly had they entered the Row, when Providence, of _malice prepense_,
as it seemed, threw them right across the path of the enemy. Cousin
Marjorie and Cousin Blanche, walking their horses slowly along by
the rails, were within a very few yards. Moreover, they were coming
towards them. Mary, aided by the sixth sense given to woman, was aware
of a subtle intensity of gaze upon her, even before she could trace
the source of its origin. She could feel it upon her--upon her and
everything that was hers, from the crown of her rather too modish hat
to the tip of her tall friend’s fetlock.
“Good morning, Jack,” said a clear, strong voice.
“Hello,” the tone of Jack was amazingly casual--“here you are again.”
There was a moment’s maneuvering, in the course of which three pairs
of feminine eyes met in challenge, and then Cousin Blanche and Cousin
Marjorie, smart groom and all, passed on without offering a chance
of coming to closer quarters. Their tactics had been calculated so
nicely that it was impossible to say whether discourtesy was or
was not intended. But there was a subtle air about these ironically
self-confident young women which prevented Mary from giving them the
benefit of the doubt.
For a moment she felt inclined to rage within. And then she bit her lip
and laughed. A moment later a sudden peck of the tall horse told her
that it would be wise for the present to give him an undivided mind.
Soon, however, Cousin Marjorie and Cousin Blanche were forgotten in the
delights and the perils of the discreet canter into which she found
herself launched. It was a perfect morning for the Row. The play of the
sun on the bright leaves, the power of its rays softened by a breeze
from the east, the sense of rapid motion, the kaleidoscope of swiftly
changing figures through which they passed, filled her with a zest of
life, a feeling of high romance which left no room for smaller and
meaner affairs. And the stride of the tall horse, as soon as she got
used to it, was such a thing of delight in itself, that she even forgot
the strange saddle and her general fears.
They rode for an enchanted hour. And somehow, in the course of it, the
life forces became more insurgent. Somehow they deepened, expanded,
grew more imperious. Jack was a real out-of-doors man, who believed
that hunting, shooting, field sports, and fresh air were the highest
good. His look of lordly health, mingled with a charmingly delicate
protectiveness, appealed to her in a very special way. For some weeks
she had known that she was beginning to like him perilously much. But
it was not until she had returned rather tired and rather hot to
Victoria Mansions, had had a delicious bath, and a very good luncheon
indeed that she began at last to realize that she was fairly up against
the acute problem of Jack Dinneford.